and how to maintain himself in the hearts of his soldiers than Bonaparte. Brief and abrupt in his speech, austere and inaccessible in his manners to the rest of his subjects, he was always ready to play the bon camarade with his soldiers; to listen to their complaints, to redress their grievances, and even to receive their suggestions. This accessibility was limited to the privates and inferior officers. To the mareschals and generals he was even more distant and haughty than to his other subjects. Thus he connected himself intimately and personally with the main body of the army itself, but countenanced no intermediate favourite, whose popularity among the troops might interfere with his own.

To the motives of personal attachment, so deeply rooted, and so industriously fostered, must be added the confidence of the soldiers in military talents so brilliantly displayed, and in the long course of victory which had identified the authority of Napoleon with the glory of the French arms. To a train of the most uniform and splendid success, they might indeed have opposed the reverses of the Peninsular war, or the disastrous retreat from Moscow and the battle of Leipsic, with all the subsequent reverses; but, as soldiers and as Frenchmen, they were little inclined to dwell upon the darker shades of the retrospect. Besides, partiality and national vanity found excuses for these misfortunes. In the Peninsula, Bonaparte did not command; in Russia, the elements fought against him; at Leipsic, he was deserted by the Saxons; and in France, betrayed, as they pretended, by Marmont. Besides, a great part of the soldiers who, in 1814-15, filled the French ranks, had been prisoners of war during Bonaparte's last unfortunate campaigns, and he was only experimentally known to them as the victor of Marengo, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Wagram. You cannot have forgotten the enthusiasm with which the prisoners on parole at used to speak of the military renown of the emperor; nor their frank declaration at leaving us, that they might fight with their hands for the Bourbons, but would fight with hand and heart for Napoleon. Even the joy of their return seemed balanced, if not overpowered, by the reflection, that it originated in the dethronement of the emperor. To recollect the sentiments of these officers, unsuppressed even in circumstances most unfavourable for avowing them, will give you some idea of the ardour with which they glowed when they found themselves again in arms, and forming part of a large and formidable military force actuated by the same feelings.

Itwas the obvious policy of the Bourbons to eradicate, if possible, this dangerous attachment, or to give it a direction towards the reigning family. For this purpose, every attention was paid to the army; they were indulged, praised, and flattered; but flattery, praise, and indulgence, were only received as the surly mastiff accepts, with growling

sullenness, the food presented to him by a new master. There was no common tone of feeling to which the Bourbons could successfully appeal. It was in vain they attempted to conjure up the antiquated fame of Henri Quatre to men who, if ever they had heard of that monarch, must have known that his martial exploits were as much beneath those of Bonaparte, as his moral character was superior to the Corsican's. In the reigning family there was no individual who possessed so decided a military character as to fill, even in appearance, the loss which the army had sustained in their formidable commander, and the moment of national difficulty was unfortunately arrived, in which the personal activity of the monarch, a circumstance which, in peaceful times, is of little consequence, was almost indispensably essential to the permanence of his authority.

Burke says somewhere, that the King of France, when restored, ought to spend six hours of the day on horseback. "I speak," he adds, "according to the letter." The personal infirmities of the good old man, who has been called to wear this crown of thorns, put the required activity out of the question. But the justice of the maxim has. not been the less evident. Not only the soldiers, but the idle and gaping population of Paris, despised the peaceful and meritorious tranquillity of Louis XVIII., and recalled with regret the bustling and feverish movements of Bonaparte, which alternately gave them terror and surprise and amusement. Indeed, such was the restless activity of the ex-emperor's disposition, that he contrived, as it were, to multiply himself in the eyes of the Parisians. In an incredibly short space of time, he might be seen in the most distant quarters of the city, and engaged in the most different occupations. Now he was galloping along a line of troops,—now alone, or with a single aid-de-camp, inspecting some public building,-in another quarter you beheld him in his carriage, and again found him sauntering among the objects of the fine arts in the Louvre. With a people, so bustling, so active, and so vain-glorious as the French, this talent of ubiquity went a great way to compensate the want of those virtues which the emperor did not pretend to, and which the legitimate monarch possesses in such perfection. "The king," said an Englishman to a Frenchman," is a man of most excellent dispositions."-" Sans doute."-" Well read and well informed."-"Mais, oui."-" A gentleman in his feelings and manners." "Assurément, Monsieur, il est né Français."—" Placable, merciful, moral, religious."—" Ah, d'accord-mais après tout," (a mode in which a Frenchman always winds up his argument) “il faut avouer, qu'un Roi qui ne peut monter à cheval est un bien chétif animal.”—This opinion, in which the possession of the equestrian art was balanced against all mental qualities, is not peculiar to the person by whom it was delivered; and it is certain that the king's affairs suffered greatly

20

RETROSPECT-DISSATISFACTION OF THE ARMY.

by his being unable to show himself, even in the exterior appearance, as a military commander. Ney, who was probably for the time sincere in his professions of zeal to the sovereign whom he so soon afterwards deserted, recommended that he should review the regiments as they passed through Paris, even if it were in a litter. But the affecting apology of the king is best pleaded in the words of his own manifesto. "Enfeebled by age and twenty-five years of misfortune, I cannot say, like my ancestor, Rally around my white plume;' but I am willing to follow to the dangers to which I cannot lead."

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None of the royal family, unfortunately, possessed the temper and talents necessary for supplying the king's deficiencies. The Duke d'Angouleme, like his father Monsieur, was retired, and understood to be bigoted to the Catholic observances, and much ruled by the clergy. The Duke de Berri, with more activity, had a fierce and ungovernable temper, which often burst out upon improper and unseemly occasions. Under their auspices, the attempts to new-model the army by gradually introducing officers attached to the royal family, gave much offence, without producing any sensible advantage. In some instances the new officers were not received by the corps to whom they were sent; in some they were deprived of the influence which should attend their rank, by the combination of the soldiers and officers; in other cases, they were perverted by the universal principles of the corps whom they were appointed to command; and, finally, there were instances, as in the case of Labedoyere, in which the court were imposed upon by specious professions, and induced to promote persons the most inimical to the royal interests. The re-establishment of the household troops, in which a comparatively small body of gardes de corps were, at a great expense, and with peculiar privileges, established as the immediate guardians of the king's person, was resented by the army in general, but more especially by the ci-devant imperial, now royal, guards.

In a word, matters had gone so far, that the army, as in Cromwell's time, existed as an isolated and distinct body, not under the government of the legislature, but claiming exclusive rights and privileges, and enjoying a separate and independent political existence of its own. Whenever this separation between the civil and military orders takes place, revolution and civil war cannot be far distant.

But there was one powerful cause of irritation common to the French nation in general, though particularly affecting the army. That very people of Europe, the most ambitious of fame in arms, who so lately and so fully stood possessed of the palm of conquest, which for centuries had been the object of their national ambition, had at once lost that pre-eminence, and with it

"The earthquake-voice of victory,

To' them' the breath of life."

The height to which their military reputation had been raised, the enormous sacrifices which had been made to attain it, the rapid extension of their empire, and the suddenness of their fall in power and in esteem, were subjects of the most embittered reflection. We in Britain vainly imagined, that the real losses which France sustained in extending her influence and her triumphs, must have disgusted her with the empty fame for which she paid so dearly. But however the French might feel under the immediate pressure of each new conscription, nothing is more certain than that their griefs, like the irritation of men impressed into our naval service, were forgotten in the eclat of the next victory, and that all the waste of blood and treasure by which it was obtained, was accounted a cheap expenditure for the glory of France.†

When a people, with minds so constituted, beheld within the walls of their capital the troops of the nations whom they had so often subdued, their first effort was to disguise, even from themselves, the humiliation to which they were subjected. When they had looked so long upon a stranger as to be certain he was not laughing at them, which seemed to be their first apprehension, their usual opening was a begging of the general question :— -"You know we were not conquered our reception of the king was a voluntary act-our general and unanimous joy bears witness that this is the triumph of peace over war, not of Europe over France." With such emollients did they endeavour to dress the surface of a wound which internally was inflamed and rankled.

These harmless subterfuges of vanity held good, until they had forgotten the late alarming and precarious state in which their country had been placed, and particularly until the departure of the allied

[Byron's Ode to Napoleon.]

A more tremendous system certainly never appeared for the desolation and subjection of the world. Every country was to be compelled in succession to furnish men for the plunder and conquest of others. If any one nation presumed to be dissatisfied, the population of another was to be driven in arms to oppress it. The application of this dreadful organization was obvious. If any portion of this compulsory army exhibited signs of discontent, it was only necessary to march it to the most wasteful point of service, and it would be destroyed before it had become dangerous, and yet not till it had performed a certain quantity of needful work for its fell employer. His vast designs have been hitherto executed with the most lavish profusion of human blood; he cares neither for distance, seasons, country, famine, nor disease. To overpower a certain part of an enemy's army, it is necessary to surprise, out-number, and surround it. Frequently he can only do this by making his men perform marches that are beyond the ordinary powers of human nature, and through countries scarcely passable. It is indifferent to him how many thousands drop from mere fatigue and want. It is sufficient that enough reach the point of action to accomplish his purposes. If he disperses the enemy, he gains a new extent of human population to drive into his ranks, and to make the instruments, however unwilling, of new depredations. Being consumed so fast, there is no time for mutiny, and little demand for pay. For a certain time, therefore, this terrible engine of war acts in his favour with dreadful energy; though it is one which may ultimately recoil upon himself.”, Quarterly Review, May, 1809, p. 446.)

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RETROSPECT-DEPARTURE OF THE ALLIES.

troops (a measure most impolitically precipitate) had removed the wholesome awe which the presence of a superior force necessarily imposed. Then instantly operated the principle of Tacitus "qui timeri desierint, odisse incipient." A thousand hostile indications, trifling perhaps individually, but important from their number and reiteration, pointed out the altered state of the public mind towards the allies. The former complaisance of the French nation, founded perhaps as much upon their good opinion of themselves as on their natural disposition to oblige others, was at once overclouded, and the sight of a foreigner became odious, as reminding them of the aspect of a conqueror. Caricatures, farces, lampoons, all the petite guerre by which individual malice has occasionally sought gratification, were resorted to, as the only expressions of wounded feeling now competent to the Great Nation. The equanimity with which the English in particular gave the losers leave to laugh as loudly as losers and beaten men could, rather exasperated than appeased the resentment of the French. The most unoffending foreigners were exposed to insult, and embroiled in personal quarrels with gratuitous antagonists in the public places of Paris, where, in former times, the name of a stranger was a sufficient protection, even when an aggressor. All these circumstances indicated a tone of feeling, ulcerated by the sense of degradation, and which burned to regain self-opinion, by wreaking vengeance on their conquerors. The nation was in the situation of losing gamblers, who reflect indeed upon their losses with mortification and regret, but without repenting the folly which caused them; and like them also, the French only waited some favourable conjuncture again to peril the remains of their fortune upon the same precarious hazard.

The language of the government of France was gradually and insensibly tinged by the hostile passions of her population. The impatient and irritated state of the army dictated to her representative, even at the Congress, a language different from what the European republic had a right to expect from the counsellors of the monarch whom their arms had restored. It is probable the government felt that their army resembled an evoked fiend pressing for employment, and ready to tear to pieces even the wizard whom he serves, unless instantly supplied with other means of venting his malevolence. But if it was a part of the Bourbon policy, rather to encounter the risk and loss of an external war, than to leave their army in peace and at leisure to brood over their discontents and disgraces, they had no time allowed them to make the ungracious experiment. A plot was already on foot and far advanced, to ensure, as it was supposed, the recovery of the national glory, by again placing on the throne him, under whose auspices and by whose unparalleled military success, it had been formerly raised to the highest pitch of military splendour.